MAKE CHOCOLATE, NOT WAR
From South America came cinchona bark, used to make quinine for treating malaria. Quinine saved lives, but most people would argue that the greatest gifts the Old World got from the New were the fragrant vanilla bean and the delectable cacao bean—source of chocolate. Aztecs, portrayed as savage warriors and practitioners of human sacrifice, were particularly fond of vanilla and chocolate. It was the Aztecs who first proved that old historical truth—no sooner do you settle down to relax with a nice cup of cocoa than a bunch of conquistadors arrive uninvited on their warhorses.
Florence Nightingale carried around a pet owl named Athena.
LIFE INSURANCE WITH YOUR LATTE?
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Imagine the patrons at your local coffee place wearing big, curly Louis XIV wigs. Got it? Well, you’re looking at the beginnings of the world-famous insurance company, Lloyd’s of London.
You can’t get a cup of coffee these days without being surrounded by mobile professionals sipping cappuccinos and busily avoiding going to the office by talking on cell phones and tapping laptops. Guess what? They did that in the 1600s too.
WHERE EVERYBODY KNOWS YOUR NAME
In the late 1600s, worldwide commerce was standard business for the merchants of Great Britain. Countless ships bearing treasures such as tea, sugar, spices, and timber rode the world’s waves. The merchants who owned these vessels were always worried that a storm, pirates, or a captain’s miscalculation off an uncharted shore would send their expensive ship and its expensive cargo to the bottom of the drink. Worried merchants often gathered to shmooze and pick up the latest information on all the ships at sea. Their favorite meeting place was Lloyd’s, a London coffeehouse.
LATTE LLOYD
Edward Lloyd opened his cramped little cafe in 1687 on Tower Street near the Thames River. London coffee shops had specialty customers, like writers, bankers, or wool traders. Located near the docks, Lloyd’s was a natural haven for those in the maritime trade. Later, when Lloyd moved his shop to more upscale digs on Lombard Street, he brought his shipping clientele with him.
Antonio de Egas Moniz won a Nobel Prize in medicine for developing the lobotomy.
THAT’S USING THE OLD BEAN
Lloyd served a fine cup of java to the coffee-crazed Londoners of the 17th century. But as he scanned his cafe full of hand-wringing ship owners (all wondering if their frigate of cinnamon or cloves had made it safely around the Horn), Lloyd saw an opportunity. He hadn’t survived the dictatorship of Oliver Cromwell, the Plague, and the Great Fire by being a dunce. Lloyd thought of a way to make his customers pay for more than just a mug of java and a dish of sherbet—and pay handsomely.
MOVE OVER STARBUCKS
In 1696, he started a publication called “Lloyd’s List” that printed information on ship movements and conditions at sea. Lloyd’s List contained dispatches from a network of reporters around the world. This info wasn’t exactly timely—this was centuries before the telegraph or telephone, but any knowledge of weather conditions in distant seas or the geography of ports where no charts existed was invaluable. Lloyd’s List grew larger over the years and became the established fount of information for London’s shipping community. Lloyd’s coffeehouse was known to be a better, faster, and more reliable source of maritime information than the Admiralty. Better yet, it was always open.
BUSINESS BLOSSOMS AMONG THE BEANS
In addition to becoming a source of information, the crowded tables of Lloyd’s spawned a new breed of entrepreneurs. These smiling gents watched Lloyd’s roomful of wealthy maritime merchants desperately trying to minimize their risks, and they saw a gold mine. They decided to sell peace of mind, and they offered to cover any potential loss of ship or cargo (because of storm, or pirate, or act of God) in return for an up-front payment called a premium. Lloyd’s coffeehouse had given birth to the insurance salesman.
GOING TO THE OFFICE—FINALLY
Edward Lloyd died in 1713, but his business survived and continued to prosper. In 1771, a group of 79 coffeehouse underwriters joined together to form a company called The Society of Lloyd’s. This was the official start of Lloyd’s of London. Three years later, these insurance men finally moved out of the backroom of the coffeehouse into real office space.
AVOIDING THE OFFICE—AGAIN
No doubt, from that point forward, the insurance men used the coffeehouse not as their office, but as a place to go to avoid going to the office.
Mahatma Gandhi never won a Nobel Peace Prize. Henry Kissinger and Yassir Arafat have.
A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE
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Like many British eccentrics, Geoffrey Pyke at first appears normal when viewed in Who’s Who, but on closer examination. . .
Geoffrey Pyke was captured trying to sneak into Berlin during World War I and tossed into a German prison camp. By carefully noting that the sunlight momentarily blinded his guards every day at one certain location, Pyke managed to escape. That and a few other escapades made him something of a celebrity back home. Once the second World War loomed, the British decided to take advantage of his offbeat genius.
WACKY BUT WORKABLE
Assigned to the War Office as a scientific advisor, Pyke threw himself into devising clever and sometimes practical ways to help the war effort:
• Motorcycle sidecars that carried stretchers.
• Motorized sleds that carried torpedoes.
• Writing “Officer’s Latrine” in German on a motorized cart British commandos were to use so the Nazis would leave it alone.
• Disguising British agents as avid golfers, then sending them throughout Germany to secretly gather signatures on a poll to convince Hitler that his people didn’t want to go to war.
But the concept that propelled Pyke from fascinating oddball to military legend was the one he hit on while pondering one of the great problems of the war.
PYKE’S TOUR DE FORCE
Allied shipping was being cut to pieces by the merciless and precise German submarine fleet. Henry Kaiser’s innovative line of Liberty Ships—cheap, mass-produced cargo ships—couldn’t keep up with the appetite of the Wolf Pack subs. What was needed was some kind of strong military presence, a way of providing air cover so the merchant ships could get through safely. Something simple to assemble, that could carry long-range aircraft, and that wasn’t so expensive that it drew valuable resources from the battlefront.
In 1969, Pan-Am began accepting reservations for moon flights. Pan-Am went under in 1991.
ICE IS NICE
Pyke’s vision was marvelously absurd: an ice ship 600 feet wide, 4,000 feet long that would carry aircraft, munitions, and crew. According to War Department sketches, the ships were to look like aircraft carriers on steroids: flat-decked monsters that could carry, repair, and launch all kinds of aircraft. In one illustration, a planned ice-ship made the regular steel-hulled carrier—the largest ship in the war—look like a dinghy.
ON THE ROCKS
Pyke envisioned a special system mated to the refrigeration equipment so the bergs could spray out super-cold water to literally freeze enemy forces in their tracks. The project was code-named Habakkuk after a Biblical prophet who said, “I am doing a work in your days which you would not believe if told.”
THE FLY IN THE OCEAN
The stumbling block to Pyke’s incredible plans was that the frozen giants of the sea would—on a nice day—turn to mid-Atlantic slush. Pyke fixed that: he mixed a special combination of wood pulp and water, then froze it. The result was a rock-hard substance that melted very slowly, just what was needed to keep the ice ships afloat. It was named “Pykrete,” after Pyke and concrete.
Pyke’s boss, Lord Mountbatten showed it to his boss, Winston Churchill, and the deal was done. In 1943, a site was found—a secret boathouse on Patricia Lake in Canada—and testing began. The (comparatively) little ice ship was a complete success—in other words, it didn’t melt all through a hot summer. But by this time the battle of
the Atlantic had been virtually won. Pyke’s project was abandoned.
After the war, Pyke worked to help staff England’s fledgling National Health Service. But as he grew even more eccentric, he began to feel that his genius wasn’t being recognized. In 1948, he took an overdose of sleeping pills and said goodbye to an unappreciative world.
The first New York to California flight, in 1911, took 49 days.
CLASS OF THE HEAD
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How did sailors ah. . . go in old ships? They lacked flush toilets—even bathrooms—on Columbus’s voyages or Drake’s raids. The answers, however, are in plain view.
For the first few millennia of seafaring, the sea itself served as a portable potty. Sailors simply grabbed onto a sail and commenced “hanging out” over the edge. On a rough sea, this could be an occasionally dangerous occupation, not to mention embarrassing: ships were small and generally traveled within sight of land. Perhaps this explains why voyages usually paused each evening at a port.
THE END OF FREESTYLING
After the 17th century, ships added urinals called “pissdales.” A metal basin built of lead or copper, the pissdale was fitted to the bulwarks (that’s a wall lining the perimeter of the deck to you landlubbers). A lead-lined hole through the bulwarks allowed liquid to escape. Aw! But going over the rail was so much fun!
Enter the “beakhead,” or more simply, the “head.” The head, a structure at the very front of the boat, was ideal for the latrines. It was easy to get to, even for lubbers. It allowed a, ahem, “free drop” and was exposed to water during rough weather, which meant that it would be self-cleaning (bonus!). The location was so logical that “head” became synonymous with a ship’s latrine, even today.
There were even special heads for officers. Certain seats more toward the side were enclosed in booths. Primarily intended for petty officers, theses “roundhouses” were also much preferred by the men during storms.
DOUBLE DUTY
For whalers, the extremely long time spent at sea meant that the crew had to get creative when it came to keeping clean. To this end, the crew urinated into a urine barrel. (Sailors with venereal diseases were excused from this duty.) The collected urine was then used to wash clothes. Urine contains ammonia, one of the few substances that sailors could use to remove oil or grease—a problem when rendering a whale. Talk about piss and vinegar!
In 1792, 1,200 free blacks sailed from Nova Scotia to found Sierra Leone in Africa.
CRUSADE OF THE STARS
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The Second Crusade (1147–1148) failed to accomplish anything in particular, so the movement went into a 40-year funk. But the crusades staged a comeback—better than ever and with a star-studded cast.
The holy city of Jerusalem that the crusaders had fought so hard to capture fell to the Muslims in 1187. This set the stage for what turned out to be one of the most interesting of all the Christian campaigns (1189–1193).
THE FREDDIE, DICK, AND PHIL SHOW
Just like the good old days of Pope Urban II (who started the whole crusade thing), Europe reacted with wild enthusiasm in 1189 to the news that a new Crusade against the infidel Saracens was about to be launched. Three of medieval Europe’s most illustrious monarchs would lead the charge to regain the Holy Land: Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, King Richard the Lion-hearted of England, and King Philip Augustus of France.
FOOLHARDY FREDDIE
Emperor Frederick was nearly 70 years old. He’d governed Germany well for 36 years, but his strong and flamboyant personality sometimes led him into scrapes. He was an experienced crusader—he’d been on the Second Crusade 40 years earlier. By early May 1189 he had assembled one of the largest crusading armies—if not the largest—ever to take the field. His army began its march on May 11, 1189.
DASTARDLY DICK
By the time the Third Crusade got under way, Richard was nearly 33. His courage and resourcefulness showed up best on the battlefield and on campaign. He was the finest Crusade commander since Bohemond (of the First Crusade), and possibly the best of all. In fact, in single combat he was unrivaled in skill and bravery.
But he was also vain about his looks and loved pomp and display. He was also devious and self-centered. Richard sold everything he could to pay for the high cost of raising and transporting a huge army to the Holy Land. (This apparently included just about everything in England that wasn’t nailed down.)
Scalping was originally a Dutch idea, not an Indian one.
FRIENDLY PHIL
Philip was the youngest, still in his mid-twenties at the start of the campaign. He wasn’t attractive, clever, or well-educated, but he had a kind of practical intelligence and a strong disposition toward equity and fairness. He didn’t have Frederick’s strong religious fervor. He was in fact more interested in acquiring Champagne (the province, not the drink), as well as Aquitaine and Flanders—all territories controlled by the English. This made Richard his natural enemy. But when the Crusade finally set out from France in July 1190, the two kings rode side by side, smiling and pretending to be the best of friends. In reality, though, Richard completely overshadowed Philip. And Philip resented it.
PHIL’S ILL
Philip and Richard parted company at Lyons, in southeast France. Philip decided to take his army over the Alps to Genoa, on the northwest coast of Italy. Richard marched south through France to Marseilles, where he hired several ships to transport his army to Genoa to link up with Philip’s forces. From Genoa, the two armies would sail together in a huge fleet to the Holy Land. Philip got there first, but he’d had a rough journey over the Alps and was ill and in low spirits. His spirits sank even lower after hearing news of the fate of the third monarch, Frederick.
FRED’S DEAD
Frederick had already made it to southern Asia Minor, when he stopped near a river and decided to take a swim. He was a vigorous old man with tremendous stamina, but he was also something of a show-off. In any case, he ran into some serious difficulties in midstream (he may have had a heart attack) and drowned. Dispirited and leaderless, his entire army turned around and trudged back to Germany. Only a few made it back though; most of them were slaughtered by the Turks or died of plague.
Josef Stalin’s son died in a Nazi German prison camp.
ACHEY AT ACRE
In June 1191 the crusaders landed at Acre, a key fortress city on the northern Palestinian coast that the soldiers of the First Crusade (1096–1099) had conquered and then lost several years later to the Muslims. Another crusader army garrisoned in Palestine had been besieging the fortress for two years without success when Richard and Philip arrived. They were just drawing up the final details for a major assault on the Saracen stronghold when Richard fell seriously ill (it was probably malaria). Though weak and listless, he had himself carried to the forward lines on an inspection tour and shot several arrows at the tower watchmen.
NEIGHBORS, GOOD AND BAD
Meanwhile, a shrewd, skilled warrior-prince named Saladin and his powerful Muslim army were camped on the hills above Acre. When Saladin heard that Richard was sick, he chivalrously sent him a gift of fruit and snow.
Even though they succeeded in breaching the walls, the crusaders’ first assault came to nothing. Philip ordered a second attack a few days later, which also failed. There was much hard and vicious fighting, centered around the crusaders’ siege engines, the huge towers that the crusaders wheeled over to the walls of besieged cities. Soldiers then used a covered bridge (to shield the men from mortal dangers like rocks and arrows) placed near the top of the tower to climb across and onto the city walls. In those days, kings and princes would occasionally give pet names to their siege engines. Richard brought his favorite siege engine, which he affectionately called “mategriffon,” “the Greek-killer,” and Philip brought his “Bad Neighbor.” Bad Neighbor battled against a similar engine mounted on the walls by the Saracens. It was called, menacingly, “the Evil Kinsman.”
THE SURRENDER OF ACRE
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The fighting grew more and more desperate, but Saladin wouldn’t send his main army against the crusaders. (He may have been waiting for fresh troops from Egypt.) In any case, this put the beleaguered defenders of Acre in a very bad position. So bad, in fact, that they were forced to beg the crusaders for a truce. The Saracens had just one request—that they be allowed to leave the city unharmed, with just the clothes on their backs. This gave the crusaders a chance to show Christian mercy in action.
During World War II, the German-sounding sauerkraut was renamed “liberty cabbage.”
RICHARD THE HARD-HEARTED
Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into History Page 35